Posts Tagged ‘resources’

Welcome to the Introduction to Science students who join us today for 5 weeks.

We will meet with your group this week to show you the many resources held by the Learning Resources Centre (LRC), how to use the library catalogue and give you membership cards.

Next week, we will demonstrate how you can benefit from the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) where you can access a number of eresources and ebooks to help with your studies.

If you would like to recommend useful apps or websites we are always happy to hear from you and if you require help accessing extra materials for chemistry, physics or biology, pop into the LRC and talk to one of the team.

‘In search of the optimal brain diet’ an article in Scientific AmericanMind this month, lists healthy brain diets as those coming from the Mediterranean, Okinawa and Scandinavia. This is likely to be due to the frequency of fish and lack of sugar in these diets. Oily fish (like salmon and tuna) contain omega-3 fatty acids that aid neurological and mental health. The best of these fatty acids is docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) because it improves nerve to nerve communication and helps the functioning of brain cell membranes.

Besides the importance of fatty acids, increasingly scientists believe there is a link between the trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms (known as microbiota) that live on and in the human body with our health and wellbeing. The greatest concentrations of microbiota are found in the gastrointestinal tract where food is digested and absorbed. This is explored in detail in ‘Human microbiota’ in the current edition of Biological Sciences Review.

For students wishing to find out more, look up some of our nutrition resources.

There is a new website for employability called Facework. The focus of Facework is on developing soft skills. Things like self management, team working, being enterprising, problem solving, speaking and listening. Learning about yourself can assist you in learning other subjects and succeeding in life. They have many resources to help you become more aware and strengthen your soft skills. There are videos, posters, challenge sheets, suggested apps and quotations. For example, here are recommended tips for discovering and playing to your strengths. You can also read and listen to stories of young people who have changed their attitudes towards work. Most of all, it is a reminder that learning doesn’t stop between courses, you carry around your skills everywhere you go.

This week Pre-Access To Higher Education students have been putting forward working titles for their projects. Many are tackling current health and social issues.

The research process has lots of steps. Some steps might not even seem like steps at all because they all overlap and you may go back and forth between them. One ‘step’ in starting a project is scouting out possible information sources for up-to-date numbers and research to spark ideas.

Getting a feel for what information is out there will also help you narrow your topic down to something manageable.

It is also perfectly normal to feel anxious about the amount of information out there. Don’t worry yet about analysing your information sources – they exist, and you can access them if you need them, that is what is important to start with.

Here are some free, authoritative and timely sources of information and data on the web:

However, it is a chance to turn to our LRC collections to see whether we are providing information for everybody. We would like to highlight our new books that focus on people and cultures who haven’t received adequate visibility in our mainly White-centred literary and academic world. At Hillcroft we acquire resources that are reflective of students’ various backgrounds and ethnicity whilst being of interest and importance to studies and lives. We are always open to suggestions for authors to try out, so keep your eyes peeled for new books and other resources to suggest too.

Here’s our list of new resources to find out more about the people, history and heritage from West Africa, the US and Britain:

To get the better grades in assignments they are looking for you to draw from a wide range of relevant information sources to reinforce your ideas. There is no end to good sources of information available to you, but navigating your way through to the best ones takes practice and guidance. Here’s a little guidance, but please ask for help from the LRC team if you are stuck.

To start out with it is advisable to find information from generalist sources such as encyclopaedias and subject specific dictionaries. For instance to find definitions of key words included in your essay question. They have more authority than Wikipedia when it comes to referencing. However, starting an assignment is scary and overwhelming, perhaps try listening to a podcast on the topic or watching a video to get more familiar with it in a short time without needing to open a book.

After getting a better picture of the topic and identifying the key words next you could move on to more specialist sources such as subject books, ebooks, newspaper and journal articles. We have access to these through the MyAthens log in page on the VLE and our borrowing service. Let us know if you have forgotten your password, it happens to almost everyone. Alternatively, search on newspaper websites and such as The Guardian or through Google Scholar.

There’s a mindmap of information sources that is posted on the VLE under LRC FAQs –> Resources.

We have been busy searching for and ordering DVDs that feature brilliant actors such as Julie Christie and Glenn Close in their later years. Media representations of older people can be mainly of stereotypes, such as the grumpy old man or the nice little old lady. These films go beyond the stereotypes and open our world to view from different perspectives. Many books and films use the story-telling device of having an older person looking back on their youth and the events that happened to them. These movies don’t do that, they focus on the present time of the characters and what happens after or approaching retirement age.

The themes that they cover include loyalty, the autumn of life and separation of loved ones through death and traumatic experiences. ‘Away from Her’, ‘Still Mine’ and ‘Poetry’ also deal with the difficult subject of Alzheimer’s disease (a form of dementia). ‘Albert Nobbs’ is about a butler who wants to get away from his job in which he has had to pretend to be a man for 30 years. It’s not all doom and gloom though as ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ paints a humourous portrait of older people from Britain adapting to new situations in India.

You can borrow up to 3 DVDs (free of charge) during staffed hours 9.00am-5.30pm, Monday to Friday. We have many more you can browse too, there’s bound to be something you’re interested in. You can recommend something by leaving a comment below or speak with us.